“Keep society functioning”? I’m not asking for them to man the electric grid, but there’s still a ton of work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it, yet would still be a net benefit to society for somebody to do it. Things like picking trash up off the side of the highway.

Ah, a ninja-edit. Cool. But tell me: why isn’t that relevant here?

> work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it

If it’s not worth minimum wage it’s been judged as not worth doing like that. You can automate picking up trash which is exactly the kinds of thing you avoid doing if labor is cheap enough. As such the wage floor is very much a benefit to society by opening a wedge for automation rather than having people do such tasks.

No, it’s been judged as not worth doing like that by people who have freedom. If you’ve chosen to rescind your freedom, you by extension rescind your right to choose not to do work for less than minimum wage.

If the automation existed that’d be one thing. But as it stands we have trashed streets and jobless bums. Clearly the system isn’t working.

You can set minimum wage to zero and you still get trashed streets because trashed streets aren’t considered worth fixing every week. Instead there’s an equilibrium where X money is used to maintain reasonably clean streets and people will just spend less if they already look ok.

Minimum wage isn’t the issue here. You said 30-50 cents an hour isn’t “relevant” yourself, but haven’t backed that up with anything. They could be paid 0 for all I care, the situation would be the same: folks who have stolen something from society (be it direct financial losses or more abstract things like health and safety and peaceful movement) being made to give retributions back to society for their crimes. There are easy wins here (trash), and more involved projects.

> haven’t backed that up with anything

It’s backed up by the finite supply of unemployed people willing and able to work below minimum wage.

As to your obsession with clean streets, the government does spend money on it the general public doesn’t actually care enough to spend more on it. It doesn’t matter how cheap it is as long as nobody is willing to fund it.

Elaborate. As of yet you’ve said nothing to refute the idea that forcing people who aren’t working to start working would result in more work being completed.

> Elaborate. As of yet you’ve said nothing to refute the idea that forcing people who aren’t working to start working would result in more work being completed.

That’s literally the first time you made that argument, so obviously I didn’t counter it.

That’s the concept behind the entire discussion. I don’t know how you’ve missed it.

Prisons labor is already forced. It’s even an enumerated exception in the constitution.

If you argument was simply to send these people to prison then just suggest that. The only thing worth discussing is non prison labor and thus non forced labor.

Has the parent comment already fallen out of your context window? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41386593 That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, you’re wasting my time if you can’t even keep track of a basic thread.

> out of your context window

Nope, the original context:

There are no jobs that want jobless people. There's few that even want 18 year olds

Your response was: Plenty of work for prison laborers.

My response of “at 20-50 cents an hour, but that’s not really relevant here.“ Obviously 20-50 cents is the nominal prison labor rate, but it also excludes the overhead of keeping prisoners which is what makes it “irrelevant” as a cost.

Thus by responding to the nominal rate you implicitly acknowledged we are no longer talking about prisoners because the actual cost of prison labor is ~64,000$ / year / inmate not their nominal wage.

“No, because the people are already a net drain on society.”

Not a 64,000$ drain on society. There’s roughly 1 correction officer per 4.9 inmates and that excludes many jobs associated with prisoners like administrative staff etc.

Inmates are really fucking expensive.

Oh you sweet summer child. I wish they only cost the taxpayers 64k a pop. (again, purely financial, ignoring the heath/safety/psychological).

> a single shelter bed could cost up to $70,000

https://sfstandard.com/2022/12/30/ending-homelessness-in-san...

64k is a slightly outdated national average. California pays $132,860 per inmate (2023) and SF is higher than that.

And again, nobody is willing to fund it at the current price. It’s simple economics that if the price were to be lower, the willingness to buy it would go up. I don’t need to explain this to you.

> willingness to buy it would go up

You are basing things on economics 101 models, demand curves max out. People don’t drink infinite water when it gets cheap enough. I don’t think streets need to be cleaned as much as they are, and that’s not based on how much it costs to clean them.

Okay so we won’t clean your street? Are so so naive to think there aren’t any streets in the entire country that could use cleaning?

I’ve never seen a street and thought it needed to be cleaned more often at taxpayer expense.

Have you ever seen a struggling person on the street and thought they could be rehabilitated to a working life at taxpayer expense?

Never really had that thought, most people get off the streets.

Long term homeless are on the streets almost exclusively for reasons of severe mental illness not lack of skills etc.

Ah. I should have guessed the “homeless people categorically cannot do the things I can do and never will” axiom was at the root of this argument. I chose not to be so defeatist nor elitist.

You have that backwards, plenty of ex homeless people working in IT.

Further most homeless end up in paying jobs, which says something about those who don’t make that transition.

Reality doesn't care about cost fixing attempts like minimum wage. People will just go around that and restore equilibrium to supply and demand. So long as excess labor is available, labor costs will be driven down until equilibrium is reached.

You might say "don't treat humans as commodities"; well, reality doesn't care specially about humans; we are just animals even if we like to think we aren't.

You are proposing a model that doesn’t fit observed reality.